Exercise calories and heart rate low

Katmary71

My Versa 2 is telling me my calories burned from weight lifting for 35 minutes is 40 calories, it has to be more than that, right? I'm also being told my heart rate doing cardio (hard workout) is as low as 80 beats a minute when I'm panting and when I take my heart rate the old-fashioned way it was 160. I have my Fitbit connected here and select the workout type on my watch and log everything as 1 calorie but the Fitbit adjustment seems low for the amount I'm working out. Any thoughts or should I contact Fitbit about this? I've started adding more than 1 calorie, I figure Fitbit covers my basic calories burned so I cut the usual estimate for each exercise in half but would love for it to be more accurate.

heybales

If it is connected.

And you log a workout on MFP for 1 calorie (why log here?).

That workout goes over to Fitbit and replaces whatever it had for calorie burn for that chunk of time with the 1 calorie - or whatever incorrect figure you decide to put in.

No wonder your adjustment is low for the day is low - because that adjustment is NOT just workouts.
It's merely the difference between what Fitbit says is daily burn (correctly or with incorrectly replaced 1 calorie) and what MFP estimated with no exercise and your perhaps incorrectly guessed Activity Level.

Using the sync wrong. Stop logging on MFP, not a great exercise diary anyway, especially compared to Fitbit.
If you just wants friends to see you worked out - make a wall post with more interesting info anyway.

And HR-based calorie burn for lifting would be wrong too - but that may be a model that correctly uses the database entry rate of burn for time when you select that workout.

And yes for many the HR accuracy looses it for workouts - which means even the more correctly done HR-based calorie burn is wrong.

Katmary71

Thanks for answering. I'm at lightly active but I'm getting about 20,000 steps right now plus a couple hours of workouts but log my activity as something. In beween activity I'm not that active. I'm logging my workouts to keep track mostly of the You Tube workouts I'm doing so I can find them again. The last couple days I've been low-balling exercise, I figure between that and Fitbit's tracking it's more accurate for non-cardio and things like aerobics where it's counting steps but not the arm movements. Like 100 calories for an hour of weights and body strength. Something like dancing I let Fitbit cover the steps. I'm trying to get my calories more accurate for maintaining. I haven't had it long so I'm trying different things, just figured those of you that know more than I do would have ideas. I started logging my yoga as cat yoga as he sat on my chest yesterday while doing it! I didn't totally understand the adjustments and if it's worth it to select "weights" or "yoga" on the Fitbit when doing it because of the low calorie count seeming to be wrong. Hope this makes sense, I'm having trouble explaining it.

heybales

The workouts on Fitbit are Activity Records - as such you can edit them and add descriptions, links, comments, change the title, ect.
Very useful for review later.

For MFP you can put a note on your Exercise Diary, same as you can your Food Diary.

I'd stop logging workouts on MFP as it just increases the syncs that must occur and makes it more prone to issues that commonly crop up with syncing issues. Logging 1 calories is the absolute worst idea, since it replaces EVERYTHING Fitbit had for that block of time with 1 calorie - talk about wrong for a workout, and life.

So you should be getting a huge Fitbit Adjustment in your MFP Exercise Diary since 20K steps is well above the highest activity level you could select. That adjustment isn't just exercise.

Fitbit is attempting to count impacts despite arm movements, which it counts as steps, calculates an instant distance, and distance and mass is calories very accurately.
And when HR is low enough it didn't start HR-based calorie burn for a workout.

During those workouts steps don't matter except for challenges - HR is used for calorie burn calculation.
I'd suggest not adjusting based on something else, it's not using steps anyway. Merely logging them.

Same way it logs your HR while sitting - but it's not basing calorie burn on it then.

Attempting to do all the adjustments individually to get more accurate maintenance figures is going to drive you nuts.
Just take what is given, and then combined with the inaccuracy in food labels and food logging - you'll find an adjustment amount to apply in your case when this active. call it a % off, and when activity goes down keep the same % off.

Depending on device logging as Weights may be worth it, but all the other workouts are merely a convenience to name the Activity Record something close to what it was.
You can rename it Cat Yoga there too.

Katmary71

Thank you for explaining this to me more in depth. I added low-ball numbers the last two days for activity and ended up with 135 calorie adjustment yesterday and over 1000 calorie adjustment today despite similar steps, logging, and workouts. I think I'm going to go back to letting the Fitbit take over but not doing low-balls or 1 calorie workouts as you suggested. I've been more active since getting it and am doing different workouts than normal (lots of You Tube videos and marching in place) because of circumstances so trying to figure out what I'm really burning has been a challenge. I reread the posts to this forum as well and it's making more sense.